S02.E05: Rise Of The Villains: Scarification

[Snookums]

The motivations are lost on me. They really are. The elaborate ruse and destruction rings hollow to me.

 

 

That bugs me too. The show does its best by showing how the Dumas (name of the author who wrote The Count of Monte Christo, natch) family became obsessed with revenge, etc. and so on, and how Theo has been raised to truly believe himself superior. Like the one scene where Bruce agrees to endorse him and after the handshake and more ham n' cheese bloviating from Theo, Bruce turns away and Frain gives this fabulous "I cannot BELIEVE how easy it is to jerk these morons around" look. He LOVES how the second-rate purple prose gets eaten up with a spoon.

 

But as you said--why??? Why is the building up or burning down of Gotham/the Wayne family so gorram important? Hell, if it's vengeance he's after, the putrid sinkhole of corruption and wealth pooling that is this city is all the vengeance the Dumas/Galavan family could possibly desire! And Bruce seeing his parents slaughtered in front of him should satisfy any payback crap. Even the whole "rebuild into the dream city my family deserves as a monument" is played off as pretty perfunctory at best. 

 

And there's another point--that this entire Hatfield Vs. McCoy jackoff fantasy generation-spanning turned it into a cult revenge boondoggle was apparently fueled by a false rape accusation. From what was presented, Celestine comes across as a self-serving liar that willingly let her lover be mutilated rather than tell the truth. And frankly, this show hasn't earned that kind of goodwill from me. It's not that women characters can't be fucked up or liars, but the whole "women be lyin' 'bout rape" trope is like sandpaper on a sunburn to me. Coming in after the whole "Kris is totally down with her stalker" thing, especially.

 

Hah. Am I forgetting something?

 

 

The bathtub scene.

Edited October 22, 2015 by Snookums

[ratgirlagogo]

 

Hah. Am I forgetting something?

Holy moly, you missed this whole bathtub scene?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qELPfzrDxI

[Hamatron]

Oh man, I totally forgot about that scene! Yeah, that is some creepy stuff.

[immortalfrieza]

Penguin thinks that if Butch has the same injury as the late Mr Dumas then Galavan will be more sympathetic. Bit of a long shot and too on the nose if you ask me.

That probably has something to do with it, but really I think Penguin just wanted to cover all his bases. I think Penguin is banking on Theo thinking that even the most dedicated of moles wouldn't be willing to lose a limb to convince him that he's turned traitor when he really hasn't.

[The Kings Foot]

That probably has something to do with it, but really I think Penguin just wanted to cover all his bases. I think Penguin is banking on Theo thinking that even the most dedicated of moles wouldn't be willing to lose a limb to convince him that he's turned traitor when he really hasn't.

 

True.  Few criminals would be that loyal to lose a limb for thier boss just a a ruse.

Edited October 22, 2015 by The Kings Foot

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

 

Gotham Catches Fire
You know what this city needs? A warehouse full of weapons and a crazy person with a flamethrower.

[Happywatcher]

Separately --Costco for criminals ! But would a detonator really blow up if hit by a bullet and blow up that large ?

 

 

A long time ago I did a short course in the military for field demolitions. I never actually blew anything up, but the better students in the class did while we watched.

 

Assuming that was a block of C4, it is very stable. In Vietnam they even used to burn small chunks of it to brew coffee. However, heat and a shock will set it off, so maybe a bullet will do it. As far as the explosion, that was very small for the size of the block.

[HoodlumSheep]

Finally saw the episode!

Because I'm so late, I'll keep it very short.

Still not enough Harvey.

Poor Butch; I kind of hope he backstabs Penguin (and manages to live to tell the tale).

I like Firefly.

Theo Galavan is too cartoonish for my liking. It makes sense that he cheeses it up for the cameras and in public, but in more private scenes he's still cartoonish (and yes, I think there's a difference between cheesiness and 2-D cartoonishness) Sorry James Frain.

So Strike Force is beginning to whittle down.

[jhlipton]

Barnes still seems to be sincere in his pursuit of cleaning up Gotham, even if I still wait for Michael Chiklis to unleash the Vick Mackey rage any day now.  I did chuckle at his reaction to Jim accidentally blowing up Firefly's bro.

 

To me, Michael Chiklis is playing a mix of his first police character,Tony Scali from The Commish plus Vick Mackey from The Shield.

[Camera One]

This episode was alright.  I felt a bit badly for the girl firestarter and was a bit thrown when she said she liked it.  I missed seeing Bruce.  I did like Selina with her own storyline though.  I did like seeing a bit of old Gotham mythology, and of course the Waynes have to look bad.  I wonder if Galavant plans to use his niece to seduce Bruce and kill him right after to replay what happened in the past.  It would be easy enough to murder Bruce... he could've gotten Jerome do it a few episodes ago.

Edited October 31, 2015 by Camera One

[John Potts]

My main problem with cutting off Butch's hand is not that it doesn't fit with the genre: this is a universe where a guy gets half his face burnt off and another one will go around squirting acid in people's faces from his buttoniere. My problem with it is that conditioning only goes so far: to again claim provenance from other Bat-portrayals, when the Joker brainwashed Robin in Batman Beyond, his conditioning broke when the Joker tried to get him to shoot Batman. While we don't know what Zzazz did to him, it's a fair bet that it involved reinforcement through pain to make Butch obey Penguin: by inflicting pain on him in turn it'd reverse the conditioning (at least in part). But were they suggesting that Fish might be returning some time? She did have one of those "Conveniently Offscreen Deaths" (and fell into water too) , and we are in comic book territory where no death is final, so that could have bee foreshadowing.

 

Monty Ashley (Recap) You know what this city needs? A warehouse full of weapons and a crazy person with a flamethrower
Turtle Doesn't *every* city, nay, every *person*, need those things?

 

Personally I get by with just 100lb of Semtex, an RPG and a couple of AK47s, I don't need a whole warehouse. But I did hope that while the cops were raiding "Weapons R Us" that there was a PA Anouncement going "We are currently being raided. Please proceed to checkout and we will endeavour to expedite your purchases as quickly as possible..."

 

Liked Little Miss Firebug, though her brothers were real Princes. While I'm not one to endorse murder (even fictional ones), I'm not going to mourn their passing when she (I guess) torches them next week.

[Chas411]

Poor Luke Garrett - I recently finished Quantico and I'm pretty sure the actor played a similar character. 

Poor Leslie - still nothing to do. 

I missed Barbara this week.

The family feud is a pretty weak plot point.